No objective= No measurable outcome.  Plain and simple, if you don’t have a strong objective for each of your classes, you’ll find it difficult to  get anything done. You may finish a chapter or unit in your course book, but that’s not (or shouldn’t be) the point.

Your students (and sometimes HR departments) need and want to know where they are going with each class. Students want to know what they will accomplish, or what they will be able to do  at the end of each session with you.  Strong learning objectives will give both you and your students that vital information.

Some ideas to help you write strong learning objectives:

• Use ACTION words. Why? Because action words require your students to be able to actually DO something. And that leads to the next point…

• Use objectives that can be observed. (By all the interested stakeholders!) There is only one kind of great learning objective: you can see the person do something, you can hear them say something,  or you can read something they wrote. You can see if they can do it successfully, or not.  There is a clear ‘Go’ or ‘No go’ going on here for both you and your student.

• Add a deadline. When will your students be able to X? By the end of today’s class, my students will be able to write a short, three line formal e-mail. (Did you notice the ACTION oriented word – WRITE. ) By giving yourself and your students a time frame, you build a tighter/stronger learning objective. You’ll know if your students were successful. You’ll also discover if you were successful as a teacher that day!

• How parameters! How do you want your students to be able to do X? In the e-mail example from before, you could add ‘How’ information like this: By the end of today’s class, my students will be able to write a short, three line formal e-mail and incorporate ‘Dear _______ : ‘ and correctly use and spell ‘Sincerely,’ as a closing.  When you provide ‘how parameters’ you provide clarity to the learning outcome you desire.

A little action word inspiration: Learning Objectives (Action Words.

What to do with your objectives?

Share them.  Feel free to write them on the whiteboard. Talk about them. (Invite your students to help you create them!) But DO share them. People really do want to know what they will get out of the class with you.

Review them after your class.  It’s always a great idea to check in with your objectives after everyone leaves. Were you able to accomplish them? Why? Why not? Were they as ‘observable’ as you had hoped? Do you need to focus more time on one or a few next class?

Test toward them.  Tests should be objectives based, NOT book activity based. Students should be able to do observable and practical things with what they learn in English each class. An exam is the space for them to show off!

Over to you: What do you think makes a strong learning objective? 

1. Check under the hood. One of my favorite comedians, and perhaps I date myself a bit here, is Dick Van Dyke. On one episode of his, he and his wife were out for a drive. All of a sudden, the car dies, and comes to a grinding halt in the middle of nowhere.  Being the man that he is, he quickly got out and popped the hood – doing his best to appear like he knew what he was doing. As his wife gets out of the car and approaches from the other side, VanDyke straightens after checking around the inside of the hood – and shakes his head. “Just as I thought…” he said heavily. “There’s a motor in there.”  My favorite Dick Van Dyke line, cus I totally identify with him and cars. I just drive em. I don’t fix em.

But as a teacher, we don’t have that option about our own teaching motors. When you start seeing empty seats, you should start asking yourself some tough questions: 1. Have I slipped into boring? (Have course books become the norm? Are my classes about my content or about my students? etc.) 2. Are my classes exciting places to be in? (Remember: global surveys suggest that 50% of employees are BORED with their job. Don’t be an extension of that.) If you don’t think you’re being an exciting place to be in, what can you do yesterday to change that? Write down those ideas, and employ them. 3. After you next class, ask yourself if YOU  would have paid for it. (That’s my personal favorite acid test.) 4. Are you having trouble teaching certain points? Ask for help! Get together with other teachers working with your company and see if you can find better delivery ideas. More heads are way better than one.

2. Are you adding value? It’s tough to do this every class, but you should make it a point to. Before you step into your classroom, you should be 1000% aware of the value you want your students to leave with. What are you doing to inject into their day? For some people, being able to laugh or have a good time is all it takes for their day to brighten. Is your classroom a place where that can happen? Are your lessons actionable? (Are students taking away skills that they didn’t have before?) Is your content touching REAL student need, or are you just filling in time? Get to know your students and what they do each day – then find material that matches what you learn = high levels of engagement.

3. Be aware of your student’s situation. Companies these days are under lots of pressure, and so are the people who work in them. If you’re sure you’re kicking ass as a teacher, meaning the problem is not under the hood, then you should look outward to learn about those empty seats. Your students likely have meetings and conference calls coming out their ears. If you’ve done your job of getting to respectfully know your students, you should feel enough confidence to check in with them when they don’t show up for a while. Just ask: “Hey, haven’t seen you around for a while. Is everything all right? Is there something not working for you in class? Too much work going on outside? Can I do something to help?”  Listen carefully. They’ll likely share a great deal with you that will help you figure out why they haven’t been around.

You’ll either find that something is “broken” for them in their classes with you, which means you’ll need to try and do some fixing up. Or you’ll learn that the problem is external, and pretty much out of your control. If it is the latter, relax. You now know you’ve done your best to solve the problem. Maybe try staying in touch with your student. If appropriate, invite them for coffee once and a while. Send them an SMS or email. (Again, not too often. Just keep in touch.) Your students will likely appreciate your care and concern – and in most cases, your listening ear. I’ve often found that students under a lot of work pressure love to vent when given the chance.

Over to you. What do you do when students don’t show up?

Photo by peasap

1. Check under the hood. One of my favorite comedians, and perhaps I date myself a bit here, is Dick Van Dyke. On one episode of his, he and his wife were out for a drive. All of a sudden, the car dies, and comes to a grinding halt in the middle of nowhere.  Being the man that he is, he quickly got out and popped the hood – doing his best to appear like he knew what he was doing. As his wife gets out of the car and approaches from the other side, VanDyke straightens after checking around the inside of the hood – and shakes his head. “Just as I thought…” he said heavily. “There’s a motor in there.”  My favorite Dick Van Dyke line, cus I totally identify with him and cars. I just drive em. I don’t fix em.

But as a teacher, we don’t have that option about our own teaching motors. When you start seeing empty seats, you should start asking yourself some tough questions: 1. Have I slipped into boring? (Have course books become the norm? Are my classes about my content or about my students? etc.) 2. Are my classes exciting places to be in? (Remember: global surveys suggest that 50% of employees are BORED with their job. Don’t be an extension of that.) If you don’t think you’re being an exciting place to be in, what can you do yesterday to change that? Write down those ideas, and employ them. 3. After you next class, ask yourself if YOU  would have paid for it. (That’s my personal favorite acid test.) 4. Are you having trouble teaching certain points? Ask for help! Get together with other teachers working with your company and see if you can find better delivery ideas. More heads are way better than one.

2. Are you adding value? It’s tough to do this every class, but you should make it a point to. Before you step into your classroom, you should be 1000% aware of the value you want your students to leave with. What are you doing to inject into their day? For some people, being able to laugh or have a good time is all it takes for their day to brighten. Is your classroom a place where that can happen? Are your lessons actionable? (Are students taking away skills that they didn’t have before?) Is your content touching REAL student need, or are you just filling in time? Get to know your students and what they do each day – then find material that matches what you learn = high levels of engagement.

3. Be aware of your student’s situation. Companies these days are under lots of pressure, and so are the people who work in them. If you’re sure you’re kicking ass as a teacher, meaning the problem is not under the hood, then you should look outward to learn about those empty seats. Your students likely have meetings and conference calls coming out their ears. If you’ve done your job of getting to respectfully know your students, you should feel enough confidence to check in with them when they don’t show up for a while. Just ask: “Hey, haven’t seen you around for a while. Is everything all right? Is there something not working for you in class? Too much work going on outside? Can I do something to help?”  Listen carefully. They’ll likely share a great deal with you that will help you figure out why they haven’t been around.

You’ll either find that something is “broken” for them in their classes with you, which means you’ll need to try and do some fixing up. Or you’ll learn that the problem is external, and pretty much out of your control. If it is the latter, relax. You now know you’ve done your best to solve the problem. Maybe try staying in touch with your student. If appropriate, invite them for coffee once and a while. Send them an SMS or email. (Again, not too often. Just keep in touch.) Your students will likely appreciate your care and concern – and in most cases, your listening ear. I’ve often found that students under a lot of work pressure love to vent when given the chance.

Over to you. What do you do when students don’t show up?

Photo by peasap

Don’t get me wrong: course book audio is great on many occasions. But sometimes students (and in this case, teacher, are left wanting something more substantial than a brief phone call or mini meeting excerpt where audio is studio quality with little to no background noise to confuse your ears.)

One of my intermediate groups asked me for more listening practice the other day, even though we faithfully do all the listenings in our course book. Not a problem! My computer is filled with podcasts on a million topics – so finding the audio wasn’t the problem. The issue was how to make that audio appropriate for the class’ English skill level.

Since all of my audio was raw (not studio clear) and designed for a native speaker to consume, a few workarounds and adjustments to the audio I chose had to be made.

1. Keep it short. The original audio that I picked was 56 minutes long. Obviously, the whole deal wouldn’t work well in class. I was very familiar with the audio, so I knew that the speaker often gave lists and key points for listeners to jot down or think about. (It’s a John Maxwell podcast about Time Management.) I focused the class around one of those lists – just 5 sentences with some teaching around them, which lasted no more than 8 minutes.

2. Prep the audio. I had the audio already set to go at the exact spot where I wanted to work. (That way I didn’t waste time trying to find the spot in class.)

3. Challenge your students. The first thing I said as we started the class was: “Well, you asked for it!” – I said it with a big smile as a joke, but I went on to explain that the audio we were about to listen to would be harder than anything we’ve done before simply because it was authentic. I think most people like to be challenged from time to time, because it gives them the chance to prove something. And interestingly enough, that’s how it went down in my class. Students (adults) sat up straighter, they leaned forward clutching their pens and notebooks, and focused 100% of their attention on what they were about to hear. (It was great!)

4. Stop. Talk it up. Interesting point: the speaker spoke clearly and slowly around his main points which made it easier for my students to hear and write them down. But as soon as the main point was made, speaking speed would warp into full speed.  In order to keep my class on the same page, I paused the presentation after every two to three sentences and asked them to throw back the general idea of what was just said. This worked surprisingly well – as most of the time, they would catch the majority of the idea. (Big student confidence booster – I actually can understand a REAL presentation!!)

5. Use Visuals. Before the class I listened to the section we were going to use a few times on my own. There were a few bits that could be easily represented by a picture or drawing. So in my lesson planner, I made a few rough drawings which I knew would help my students further understand what was being talked about. Before the class began, I drew each picture on our whiteboard and asked my students to identify each, and how they imagined it could possibly apply to the topic of Time Management. (Got them thinking about the theme.)

We successfully made it through the 8 minute audio, and ended in a 15 minute discussion of what was heard. The students loved it! And since the material was REAL and about a theme of great practical importance, we were able to engage in serious discussion about each of the points and how they could/should be applied in life.

How about you? Do you ever employ “real audio” in your classes? How do you go about doing it?

(Photo by Joe Seggiola )

You are betting your life on the resolutions you made this New Year. You should want to succeed at them very badly, and should work hard to do so– get organized and learn more about it, not just hope which is what most resolutions really are.

Bets are won by those that are confident and those that have more information.So win your bets by becoming that kind of person.

via How to Waste Your Life.

This is a great post. But it made think about teaching in a different way. Some students are in my and your classroom because they have to be there. But others are there because they really REALLY want to learn English.

For some it’s a goal. For some it’s a resolution. But I wonder: is learning a second language one of those decisions or choices that should be seen as a bet?

Learning a second language (or 3, or 4th) sure has the power to change lives. Jobs can be won or lost. Deals can be made or lost. Impressions can be made or not – language matters. I wonder how my teaching could change if I started viewing what I do in the light of the great possibilities this one class could hold for my students…

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” – Chinese Proverb

Isn’t it easy to get so focused on delivering your lesson, and making it through course book activities that they become the central core of your teaching practice? You prep your class, bring in activities and games to make things more dynamic and engaging, you help your students through countless grammar activities and case study discussions. But have you ever paused to consider that by remaining in this mode, you’re only giving your students a fish each day?

Be more effective: Teach your students to fish.

With Listening Activities: When your course book offers a listening activity, don’t just listen and do the q&a that come after it. Look carefully at the questions being asked. Are they detail or gist questions?

Try: Before you do the listening activity, let your students know WHY they are about to listen to what they are going to listen to. If it’s a gist activity, let them know. Say something like “The next activity is going to help you develop your ability to listen for the big idea or summary of something. Don’t worry about trying to catch specific details here. Just imagine that after you listen, you need to give a summary of what you heard to your boss or coworker.”

Why Explain why? Helping your students know why they are doing the activities they do in class can help them be more aware of what they are actually getting from you. ROI. Your goal here would be to help students realize that when they leave your class today, they do so hopefully feeling like they were able to do something that maybe they couldn’t do well before. (That’s a great feeling!)

It also doesn’t hurt to question why you do the things you do everyday in class. Is it just because the book tells you to do it? Or are you really doing something that will make a positive impact on your student’s learning journey? If you’re not convinced that the book is really meeting student need, what can you do to improve upon it? That’s part of our job.

One step further: Encourage students to work on listening skills outside of class. Have a talk with them about who their favorite English singers are. Favorite English movies or TV shows. Podcasts. News etc. Ask them how often they really attempt to listen in order to harvest information from what they hear. Let them know that learning English has a lot to do with increasing contact with the language in as many ways as possible, as often as possible. If they want to move faster in the learning process, they should be increasing purposeful contact with English.

When you know who their favorite singers are, for example, invite them to listen to their favorite song over the weekend – but on purpose this time. (Remember: we can listen passively – maybe just enjoying the music, the sound of the singer’s voice etc. Or we can listen actively: paying careful attention to the words of the song. What’s the artist trying to communicate to me? Is it a story? Is it happy or sad? ) Ask students to present a quick review of their song/movie/podcast etc. Have them explain the big ideas of the song.

Again: let them know that this activity, if done often, will speed the training of their ears. It will help them when they listen to an English conference call or presentation. Make sure they can connect classroom work with real world work. Their classes should be making a difference there. Are they?

So today, don’t just give your students fish. Spend time helping them learn how to catch their own and fry them too!

I really appreciate Hughes identification of a few sub-skills to help teach writing more effectively today and into the future: Expressing thoughts with fewer words, making every word count, and adapting to formality.

I also wonder if it would be helpful for teachers to begin stepping into the communication medium of their students to aid the teaching process. Many of my students are hardened BlackBerry users who often are in a near constant state of connection with their coworkers and bosses via BlackBerry chat or SMSing. I know from some of the messages I’ve exchanged with my students, that there’s opportunity here to develop writing skills.  How to step in? If you own a BlackBerry, why not consider adding your students to your chat contacts. Encourage brief mini chats with them. After your chat, and the next time you see your students, highlight spots of their chat with you where mistakes were made. (More often than not, typos are the major culprit, but everyone makes those.)

And thinking about formality/informality: maybe even delving into abbreviations which often show up in SMS and Chat messages to help students communicate more effectively when appropriate. (Always monitoring the writing style of the person they are corresponding with, and match it. )  EX: AAMOF – As a matter of fact, FYI – For your information, 411 – asking for information.

There are plenty of common abbreviations out there that could either throw students off, or enable them to communicate (when/where appropriately) more effectively. IMHO teachers would do well to delve into helping students use these too.

How we write is changing. I wonder if how we speak is also in a state of flux? Think: the persistent rise of conference calls and webinars. Could there be sub-skills here that teachers should be working into their classes to help students be more effective?  A few possible ideas:

1) The art of speaking slowly in a poor audio / lagged environment – I use Skype frequently, and from time to time, experience a few seconds of delay between what I say and what the other person hears. Now if your student combines lag with a presentation or training session in their L2…..

2) The art of involving/engaging an audience one cannot see.  Pushing students to steer away from monotone voices when presenting in a conference call. Learning how to involve other participants by calling them by name. Learning how to present while at the same time track/answer questions being texted or typed by other participants without dropping the ball in the process. Regularly checking in with participants to make sure they are following you, etc.

To work on these, perhaps at times there would even be a need to alter the typical classroom. Instead of f2f, perhaps a few webinar based classes would be in order?

What do you think? Are you seeing other areas of ESL that are in a state of flux?

3 Ways You Can Use Whiteboards Effectively

1) Outline goals for the day: Personal favorite. I love going through what my students will leave the room with by sticking my class objectives on the board. By doing this, and actually delivering on those objectives, you help your students know you are adding value to their day. I’ve also found that noting my objectives for all to see, helps us stay on target throughout the class. So try this in your next class: note your objectives on the board, go through them with your students. THEN start your class. See what happens.

2)Highlight key vocabulary for your unit. A great way to help you focus your student’s on a few words at a time. Note down key words you want your students to know on your board, and put them up there every class until you’re ready to move on. During my lessons I try to design activities which naturally “reuse and recycle” words from my whiteboard list. If they get stuck, I’ll draw their attention back to the board and remind them: What you need is up there!  I often find myself returning to my lists over and over again during the class – so writing it up there once, is a great time saver.  (Try blocking off a corner of your board space for vocabulary. I usually use the top right corner.)

3) Error Support: I like to avoid outrightly telling my students what they didn’t do correctly. When they figure out their errors on their own and correct them, well that just seems like a better strategy to me. To help you with this, try using your whiteboard to record the exact phrases students say. (Too long? just write the incorrect word or phrase.) Pause. Turn to your student and invite them to read it silently. I’ve found that most of the time, students are able to spot their mistake when they can SEE what they said. If they still can’t get it, invite other class members to try. (Peer correction.) If that doesn’t work, give a hint. Circle the area where the mistake is. (Don’t tell yet.) Finally, if no one gets it, step in and offer help.  Rewrite the sentence so students can see the correct way to say what was said.  (Important Note: You should request permission from students BEFORE class about doing this. If you don’t you could risk having them feel embarrassed or singled out. )

How about you? What do you use your whiteboard for?

I’m passionate about providing great service, and I think we all are if we’re serious about staying in business and doing well at it. But one thing I have found is that it is sure hard to consistently hold yourself to high standards of quality on a day to day basis when all life breaks loose on you. Guess just saying that it’s hard to hold your focus on the right things each day, and EVERY day, in order to uphold a high standard of excellence.

So one thing that has me thinking is in the whole area of goals. Watt mentions in his post that “You won’t get anywhere without clear, achievable goals.” Totally agree. Goal setting is vital. But I’ve been wondering what that looks like at a School/Teacher/Student level where the school and teacher have course goals that need to be covered in the class.

Our company mission is to adapt ourselves to what our students need in English each day. We strongly believe that we’re supposed to be there to meet our client’s needs, verses trying to follow our own strict program. I’ve had days where I had a full lesson plan mapped out for one of my students, only to have said plan tossed out the window 2 minutes into class as the student has an urgent email or presentation or conference call to prep for. In English. Needs my help. I wonder where goals go there?

On one level, I feel excited when these change ups happen. I’ve been in workplaces where strict service to school agenda was the rule. Nothing else mattered. The goal was the god of the classroom, and we had to bow down and serve without question or deviation.  And the results were excellent. For the school.  But what about the student? They often left their class knowing they had completed a school level goal or objective, but out there, outside our nice little classroom, the real world awaited. Usually quite different to what we had just been working on.

So how do you balance working towards goals and objectives, and really meeting the needs of your students? And my biggest pain in the brain: how to do that in tiny blocks of time that corporate budgets love to box you into. (Later post for that I guess.)

To language school goals: I would still say that I embrace the CEFR (Common European Framework of languages). The “Can Do” statements are broad and open in that they allow you to work towards them using any content area you desire. They give you a firm direction to go in, but how you get there is between you and your student. (Still allowing for personalization of the class to student need.)

A language school can work with their teachers to set up which goals teacher/students will work towards in that month, still encouraging the teacher to adapt to serving the client’s day to day needs.  (Situation: student brings in an email to work on. Teacher knows that an objective that needs to be worked on is student being able to write short coherent messages or notes. Emails should  be short and coherent, right? Adapts easily. Goal accomplished, and student helped.) Important to become very familiar with CEF objectives in order to be able to serve up a flexible class. Adapting on the fly.

What do you think? How should you as a teacher adapt to your student’s need, while at the same time meeting course objectives along the way? Thoughts? Strategies? All are welcome.

Defining Your Success as and English teacher:

How do you measure success in your classroom?

If your students are passing their exams, even attaining high marks  - does that mean you’re doing well as a teacher? You know, I used to be guilty of thinking that. But how many times have you ever seen students do well on a test – only to freeze up or choke in a real life conversation? I’ve seen it happen many times.

Why?

Beware of Classroom Focus: Test passing or Genuine communication?

The darkside: We work in corporate settings. Our clients often require us to deliver services inside of strict blocks of time – 60 hours, 120 hrs etc.  In most cases, those times are just what you need to finish a course book.  The big question clients ask, thanks to budgets, is: how fast can you train my people? How fast will they learn English? It’s all about results at highspeed.

Sadly, learning a language is rarely high speed. So how do you balance the need to meet client “speed needs” with reality?

The tendency when you’re working inside tight time deadlines is to default to a test passing mode, don’t you think? You focus your classroom work around quickly moving through course book units, and ensuring your students pass the unit end test.  This could be seen as success. The student does well during the unit, and aces the test. You’ve done your job. Right?

I think the answer to that question depends on who you’re responding to. If you’re talking to the HR budgeting manager, then yes – the mission was completed. Student “was trained” successfully and inside the allotted time. But what about if you ask the student? What would the answer be?

I suspect that at the beginning, the student will feel very happy with their “progress.” We all love to have a sense of progress -and I would argue that genuine and rapid feedback is often lacking in ESL programs. But after all the units have been finished, and their exams passed, has the student been able to improve their ability to SPEAK in English? Has fluency and confidence gone up? Are your students better able to write those pesky English emails to clients? Are they able to present an update through a teleconference to their head office with fewer errors? Less fear?

Don’t get me wrong – the course book does hold value for helping students develop their English skills. But beware: high speed/book married environments are not conducive to helping students develop their communicative skills.  Communication – that’s the whole reason why you help students learn another language to begin with. It’s not to help them finish a course book in 65 hours.

Next time: how to combine the dreaded course book with genuine communicative exercises.  (But I wonder…can you serve two masters?)